From the customer’s point of view, and in daily use, the most essential part of the ventilation unit is its user interface for controlling the unit. Petteri Kähärä and his colleague Mirva Komulainen work in product development. They are a team responsible for the software developing and control systems of Vallox’s ventilation units.
Petteri Kähärä started his career at Vallox in the mid-1990s. The first task of his summer job was mowing the lawns in the factory area. Only a few days later, when the lawns had been mowed, Petteri got to work inside the factory building for the first time. Over the next couple of years, he probably did all possible work existing in the factory at the time. After completing his military service in the Finnish Defence Forces, Petteri moved from production tasks to R&D department to draw CAD images. It took only a few months until the current R&D manager Petri Koivunen learned about Petteri’s programming skills. Development of a digital control system had been started at Vallox only a few years earlier and the work had been commissioned elsewhere. Thanks to Petteri’s skills, the development cycle of control systems became faster when work could largely be done inhouse.
Petteri has always liked all kinds of designing and construction. As a child on the farm, he wanted to dismantle and assemble various agricultural machines. He is a self-taught programmer whose enthusiasm for programming awoke at the age of 7 when he began coding a wide variety of computer-controlled devices and games. Petteri’s career and leisure activities are based on a great deal of interest and passion for technical matters.
Versatile tasks from programming to project management
Petteri currently works as an electronics and software developer, and his closest colleague, Mirva Komulainen, as a control system developer.
Most of Petteri’s work consists of researching new technologies, designing new features for ventilation units, and instructing subcontractors. In addition to sitting at a computer, work is also done in Vallox’s laboratories and even in the field to find out how things work in practice. Petteri himself spends only a very small part of his working hours writing code. However, according to Mirva, it’s only because Petteri is so fast in coding.
Mirva is mainly responsible for the project management but does also some programming. She is an automation engineer by training and is currently studying software developing along with her job. She has hold the current position for two years and tells that her prior long work experience in Vallox technical support facilitated the transition to the new position.
Over the years, the software development at Vallox has changed from working alone to working as a team, at the same time as the work has diversified. ”One could say that the old SE-controlling was one book, but the current MV-controlling is a whole library”, Petteri illustrates the development of the work, and continues: “The best thing about my job is its versatility. It is very important to me to be able to develop and design things very freely”.
The programming work is getting more and more important
Today, the needs and requirements for the development of ventilation units often come from outside and from new regulations. “Today, the advantage in the market can no longer be achieved by changing the efficiency or the construction of the device. Instead, the role of control systems has grown important.” says Petteri. Home automation solutions, connecting the devices and wireless systems are technological solutions that are rapidly becoming more common also in the ventilation industry. “The world is becoming more digital all the time, and our role is to take the ventilation business into the same direction,” Mirva continues. “All in all, energy efficiency and sustainability are increasingly emphasized in the ventilation of homes and other properties.”
The company has developed and grown over the decades: “Both the size of the factory building and the number of employees have probably almost tripled since the early stages of my career in the 1990s,” Petteri laughs. Petteri and Mirva praise the 50 years old Vallox as a good workplace. “The 50-year-old Vallox definitely stays on the right track even in the future.”
The story of the everyday life
Recently, a customer had an exceptional problem that was being addressed for a year: The buttons on the control panel of the customer’s Vallox ventilation unit stopped working from time to time. Neighbours living in the same row house, had similar ventilation units and control panels, but they never had this same problem. Vallox was trying to solve the problem many times during the year. One by one the parts the control panel were replaced with new. Eventually, the entire ventilation unit was replaced with a new one. But the problem continued.
One day Mirva and Petteri were again trying to find a solution to this malfunction. By measuring with a new oscilloscope, they detected a remarkable interference in the apartment. The team started to find out the source of the interference by turning off each fuse in the apartment, one at a time. Finally, they found out that the reason for the interference was in the living room. Then by disconnecting and connecting the different devices to the electricity it turned out that the reason was the set-up box. The power supply to the set-up box had broken down and caused an interference, and thus the buttons on the control panel of the ventilation unit did not work when the set-up box was on. The problem was finally solved by buying a new set-up box!
